Washington: A sudden failure within the United States’ air-traffic-control communications network brought commercial aviation to a standstill on Friday, forcing the Federal Aviation Administration to ground departing flights nationwide and leaving travellers facing widespread delays and cancellations, agencies reported.
The FAA said the disruption affected multiple air-route traffic control centres and ordered airlines to hold all departing traffic “until further notice.” The agency described the measure as necessary “due to extraordinary circumstances and for reasons of safety.”
More than 3,500 aircraft were already in the air when the order was issued. Officials said radar and communication systems had not failed entirely, allowing controllers and pilots to coordinate the safe landing of aircraft already airborne. Emergency medical and law-enforcement flights were permitted to continue operating.
Old Equipment Fault
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said instability in radar and communications data began around 3:36 p.m. Eastern Time, affecting systems used by control centres and terminal radar approach facilities. The FAA responded by imposing a nationwide ground stop while engineers worked to identify the source of the fault.
Duffy blamed ageing telecommunications infrastructure for the breakdown, saying legacy switches and routers had been overwhelmed by a sudden increase in data traffic. “What we have is an incredibly old air traffic control system,” he said. “Our routers actually got overloaded with data, and… they started to give us inconsistency in the data from those routers. And because of that, we shut the system down.”
He said the affected equipment included “old switches, old routers” and copper lines dating to the 1980s. “It’s an old system that went down and went down everywhere. It got overloaded,” Duffy said. He noted that newer digital systems and Internet Protocol switches installed during the Trump administration had continued to operate normally.
Officials said there was no evidence linking the outage to a cyberattack, rogue artificial intelligence or a Microsoft-related technical issue. Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said initial investigations had found no suspicious online activity, unauthorised intrusion or claim of responsibility, although inquiries were still ongoing.
Flights Resume Slowly
The FAA lifted the nationwide ground stop at approximately 8:15 p.m. Eastern Time after taking steps to ease pressure on the affected network. Despite the resumption of departures, officials cautioned that normal operations would not return immediately as airlines worked to reposition crews, aircraft and stranded passengers.
Flight-tracking platform FlightAware reported that more than 15,000 flights had been delayed or cancelled. More than 4,000 services were cancelled on Friday, with further cancellations continuing into Saturday as carriers struggled to clear the backlog.
Airlines, including Air India, advised passengers to check flight status before heading to airports. The disruption caused significant congestion at major hubs and left many travellers seeking alternative transport arrangements.
Funding Push Intensifies
Duffy called on Congress to approve an additional $50 billion to modernise the country’s aviation infrastructure. “This is an emergency,” he said. “I want Congress to give us emergency funding. This is bipartisan. This is American. I want $50 billion.”
He argued that the $12.5 billion already approved was insufficient to upgrade the network of airport towers, terminal radar facilities and en-route control centres before the Thanksgiving travel period.
